The monitors, which were placed off the coasts of Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Fripp Island earlier this month, will record water conditions used to create storm-surge and flooding models, said Madilyn Fletcher, director of the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences in Columbia.
"As a storm starts moving and changes the condition of the ocean waters, the information will go into storm-surge models, which will predict the level of flooding and where it will occur," she said.
The Carolinas Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction System is a joint effort between the institute, the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Fletcher said Fripp Island was chosen as a drop site because of its close proximity to Hilton Head Island, one of three densely populated areas weather officials said they needed real-time storm information for. A third Fripp Island monitor is expected to be added next year.
Although the data collected by the buoys won't affect the state's evacuation plans, which usually are enacted about 36 hours before a hurricane is expected to reach land, Jon Boettcher, hurricane coordinator at the S.C. Emergency Management Division, said local officials could use the information to determine where the worst flood damage is going to occur.
"The information county officials could use on a real-time basis É could prove to be very useful," he said, adding that state officials need storm information well before the buoys would be able to provide it.
Fletcher said program coordinators are continuing to look for ways to relay the data to officials within the coastal counties.
"We want to work with emergency response divisions in the region to find out what is the best way to deliver this information to them," she said, adding that future use of the buoys could include the collection of water quality data.
Data collection is now being posted on the program's Web site, www.carocoops.org.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pays for the coastal monitoring program and has set aside $2.5 million of its budget over each of the past two years to pay for it.
